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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28047897">The Garden below</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueFloyd/pseuds/BlueFloyd'>BlueFloyd</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Piranesi - Susanna Clarke</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Full Description, Gen, Worldbuilding</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:33:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,062</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28047897</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueFloyd/pseuds/BlueFloyd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The House is not the only place between worlds</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Garden below</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If you were to ask the Most Beloved Child of the House, he would tell you that the House is endless. But what does a child know of the extent of the world?</p><p>The House contain multitudes, yes. One could walk a lifetime in a straight line without leaving the House (one did, actually). If such a feat were possible, one could walk for all eternity in a straight line without leaving the House. This is true, but it does not mean that the House is endless. It only means that the straight line is the crudest of tools.</p><p>It is very easy to find some of the limits of the House. Make use of a Staircase. Soon you will find yourself on the uppermost floor. On most places it is the Third Floor. On some places the structure of the House has been destroyed and the Ground Floor is the Highest Floor. On some places the House can go up to six Floors, but never more. Look up. You see the Roof, some feet above you. This is a limit of the House. The Sky is not the House. Go down now. There are Caves in the House, but very few of them. Look to the granite slabs forming the Floor of the Caves. Look to the cobbles of the Courtyards. Look to the marble of the Ground Floor. These are limits of the House. The Earth is not the House.</p><p>These are the limits that the House displays for all to see. Only a child would not think of them and ponder on the endlessness of the House. But there are more limits to the House, limits that are not so easily perceivable. The House has a Facade. An external Wall, not overlooking a Courtyard — for it is plain that the Courtyards are parts of the House — but overlooking the Garden. The Facade is endless, a Wall making a straight line, always three stories high, marking the uttermost limit of the House. In all the endlessness of the Facade, there is less than two thousand Windows, always on the Third Floor except for thirty-four of them, on the Second Floor. None are on the Ground Floor. Most of these Windows are small affairs, single pane Windows allowing to catch but a small glimpse of the Garden from the House.</p><p>And in all the endlessness of the Facade, there is but one Door. It is a small, unadorned Door. It is very hard to find from the inside of the House. There is a Hall (would you ask the Most Beloved Child, he would call it the Six Hundred Forty Seven Million Two Hundred Eighty Three Thousand Eight Hundred Sixty Fourth Western Hall of the Second Floor) from which you can enter a long dark room containing numerous Statues of Men Looking Ahead, all looking at a point above the Door from the Hall to the Room. Ignore the gaze of the Statues and go to the back of the Room. The Statues are crowded here, you would have to climb over some of them. Almost near the back Wall of the Room, there is a narrow space between the Pedestals of three Statues, with a small staircase going down in a pitch black Room. In this room there is a second Staircase, going up in a long vestibules with sixteen doors. The second on the left leads to a series of small room. You would have to continue for quite some time, going west, going north, going up, coming back west, seemingly retracing your steps in a series of rooms identical to the ones you were in, until you arrived at a second Vestibule where you would take the seventh door on the right. You would find yourself in a small room where you would see one of the windows overlooking the Garden and a few Statues. You would have to operate one of the three Statues mounted on hinges that the House hosts and go down the Staircase below. You would have to cross through the same room four times from east to west until the Western Door would allow you to access the next room on your path. There you would have to wait for the room to slowly fill with water until you can reach a door high up. The House makes Its own geometry here, and its axioms are of reluctance and stubbornness.</p><p>In the end you would arrive to a Room containing the Statue of Industriousness Winning Over Wilderness, the Statue of a Last Plea Not To Go, and at last, the Door. You can open it, you can stand on the Threshold, you can - if your <em>bauplan </em>allows for it - stand with one feet in and one feet out. You can be both inside and outside the House, in a liminal state between liminal spaces. And if you are too blind to see the wonder that is the Threshold in itself, you can choose to walk into the Garden.</p><p>There has been heated debates for the longest of time over the duality or unicity of the Garden and the House. Nowadays, every being of sensible opinion agrees that they are two different Places. But it can be understood why the question remained open for so long. In addition to the possibility to step from one to the other in a way much reminiscent of plain movement, the Garden is visible from the House, and the House is even more visible from the Garden, the Facade seeable from so many places. Moreover, Their basic principles have much in common. Where the House has Walls, the Garden has Hedges. Both or Them hosts Statues made of the same material. Both of them are visited by aerial creatures. But the differences are numerous too. The Garden hosts terrestial creatures and insects. The House host marine creatures. The Garden has but one Floor. The Garden allows passage to other worlds through both crannies containing identical Statues and ponds of water. There are three Moons in the nocturnal skies of the Garden, only one in the ones of the House.</p><p>And of course, where the House is only temporarily inhabited by creatures crossing over from other worlds, the Garden is always full of life, overflowing with a abundance of vegetal species born there, creating the most complex of ecosystems.</p>
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